TOKYO: Nearly three-fourths of Japanese voters want the country's troops withdrawn from Iraq within the next six months, a newspaper poll said yesterday.

Twenty-eight per cent of respondents to a poll out by the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said Japan should pull its troops out immediately. Another 46 per cent want the forces withdrawn in the first half of next year "along with the British army and others," the newspaper said.

Just 11 per cent said the troops should stay until the United States withdraws its forces, it said.

Japan recently extended to December 2006 the mandate for its 550 troops, who are based in the southern Iraqi town of Samawa.

Media reports have said the government is considering a withdrawal before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi steps down in September. Koizumi's approval of the mission helped cement his close ties with US President George W Bush.

With their activities strictly limited by Japan's pacifist constitution, the Japanese troops are carrying out humanitarian and reconstruction tasks such as repairing schools and building roads.

The mission is nevertheless Japan's most dangerous overseas dispatch since World War Two, and the troops rely on British and Australian troops to maintain security in the region.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on a lightning visit to Iraq last week that British troops could start leaving Iraq next year. Australia has said its troops will likely stay beyond May.

The Nikkei poll was carried out on December 23 and December 24.

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